Brooklyn head coach Jason Kidd can barely watch as the Nuggets pound the Nets.

And so we come at last to that moment in New York basketball history on Thursday when the putrid Nets from Brooklyn face the hideous Knicks from Manhattan, and when only one can truly disgrace itself on the same night.

But if you had Kidd, Mike Woodson or even Rex Ryan in the first-coach-to-be-axed betting pool around here, you’re a loser today – same as your local basketball, football and hockey teams.

Instead, Kidd dumped top assistant Lawrence Frank on Tuesday like just another cup of soda, “reassigning” his $6 million defensive specialist to daily reports – in what could be called the basketball equivalent of firing the pitching coach. And we all know what happens to the manager after the pitching coach goes, if the losing doesn’t stop.

The scapegoat move didn’t exactly fire up the troops or inspire any interior defense at the Barclays Center, where the Nets fell to Denver, 111-87. They were destroyed in the effort stats, gave up 50 points in the paint and 16 on second chances. When they fell apart in the third quarter during a 20-4 run by the Nuggets, the Nets were appropriately jeered.

“We’re at home getting beat by 30, 40 points,” Kevin Garnett said, head down. “We’re figuring out how to get this together. There are a lot of moving parts. Got to figure this out soon.”

Kidd's plan for the Nets seems to be crumbling before his eyes.

Now Kidd must try to get Woodson fired on Thursday when the Knicks hobble across the Manhattan Bridge for a game that should be avoided at all costs by true fans of the sport.

Is Kidd ready to take over yet another aspect of this team during games, considering his early confusion? He definitely thinks so. He gave absolutely no credit to Frank, betraying the rift between the two men.

“I’ve been doing it since Day 1,” Kidd insisted. “As head coach, it doesn’t change.”

He can dismiss Frank all he wants, but much of the chaos surrounding this team has often begun with Kidd. He was suspended for the first two games because of a DUI plea. His substitution patterns, albeit disrupted by injuries, have been at times unfathomable. Kidd’s poor management of timeouts late in games led him to spill soda last week against the Lakers, netting a $50,000 fine.

Although Frank and Kidd never warred in public, league sources reported chafing recently between the two. Kidd may have heard secondhand stories about the assistant complaining behind his back. There are layers of irony to this story, because Kidd got Frank hired as the Nets’ head coach back in 2004 after complaining about Byron Scott.

Meanwhile, Frank has essentially been fired from two jobs in eight months. He was dumped as head coach of the Pistons in April, with $3.7 million left on his contract, some of that assumed by the Nets.

With all this commotion as a backdrop, the Nuggets came to Brooklyn offering Brian Shaw a glimpse of an alternate universe he so fortuitously escaped last summer. Turns out this was quite the career bullet that Shaw dodged. If Mikhail Prokhorov and Billy King had decided to go with an experienced assistant instead of with a raw rookie/superstar, Shaw was prepared to accept the offer immediately.

Randy Foye (r.) and the Nuggets are too much for the floundering Nets to handle.

He was very lucky the Nets gave him only a token interview, having all but settled on Kidd. The Nuggets are now 11-6, on a seven-game winning streak and with a significantly younger roster.

“At the time (Shaw was passed over), he was mildly disappointed,” said Jerome Stanley, Shaw’s longtime agent.

“But once he got the chance to get with an organization that he felt gave him a chance to win, he’s been ecstatic.”

Shaw and Stanley were not exactly thrilled with the way that whole thing went down.

“I flew across the country, turned on the TV, and saw they were negotiating a contract with Kidd,” Shaw said. “Threw me off a little bit.”

Shaw did his due diligence as an assistant under two highly respected head coaches, Phil Jackson with the Lakers and Frank Vogel in Indiana. He was considered the favorite for the Nets job, until Prokhorov fell in love with the notion of a higher-profile hire.

According to the master plan, Kidd was going to learn on the job and Frank was going to supervise his transition. Instead, Frank got transitioned right off the bench.